Google HTTPS – Should You Upgrade?

Should You Upgrade to HTTPS?

If you are sitting on the fence about upgrading to HTTPS, there is now a date set. All website owners should consider upgrading to HTTPS if they haven’t already. This is no longer a consideration limited to e-commerce sites.

Google has been encouraging webmasters to make the change to non-secure websites for a few years now – including hinting at small rankings boost as an incentive to use https.

Effective July 2018, Google’s Chrome browser will mark non-HTTPS sites as ‘not secure’ and will begin explicitly warning users. Over 50 percent users worldwide are using chrome as their internet browsers, so this will definitely have a significant impact on websites that have not upgraded.

The clearly visible warning will be shown in Chrome’s address bar, indicating that an insecure website is “Not secure.” This warning will show for all non-https websites.

The prominent warnings can cause website visitors to react negatively on sites that have not yet upgraded, which will obviously affect bounce rate, advertising, lead generation, sales, services and so on.

Newman Web Solutions has successfully made the switch and all clients now are have SSL on their sites. If your hosting has not made the switch, check out our WordPress maintenance plans – we provide FREE Hosting with FREE SSL for our monthly maintenance subscribers.